frush, and bonus words

[ersatz-read.livejournal.com]

frush
verb.  To batter, to break in pieces. 
noun.  1.  a clattering or crashing noise; 2. the frog of a horse's foot.

etymology:  French froisser, to crease or to crush.

As a culinary term, it once referred to carving certain types of meat; I've seen references to both chicken and chub (fish).

And it brought friends!  Samuel Orchart Beeton said:
"In the seventeenth century carving was a science that carried with it as much pedantry as the business of school-teaching does in the present day; and for a person to use wrong terms in relation to carving was an unpardonable affront to etiquette.  Carving of all kinds of birds was called, to thy them; a quail, to wing it; a pheasant, to allay it; a duck to embrace it; a hen, to spoil her; a goose, to tare her, and a list of similar techniques too long and too ridiculous to repeat."

An article titled "Obsolete Cookery" in the weekly magazine Household Words (edited by Charles Dickens) contains a similarly colorful list:
"The directions for carving are very quaint.  You are to break a deer and to leach brawn...spoil a hen, unbrane a mallard, display a crane, disfigure a peacock...culpon a trout...transon an eel, tranch a sturgeon, undertranch a porpoise, and barb a lobster."

A Google search for the phrase "transon an eel" reveals more animal-specific carving terms.

Comments

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Jargon is awesome. (Especially the social uses of same.)

---L.